Speaking of the recently passed Edmunds Anti-polygamy act President John Taylor preaches: "Yet by their action they are interfering with my rights, my liberty and my religion, and with those sacred principles that bind me to my God, to my family, to my wives and my children; and shall I be recreant to all these noble principles that ought to guide and govern men? No, Never! No, NEVER! NO, NEVER! I can endure more than I have done, and all that God will enable me to endure, I can die for the truth; but I cannot as an honorable man disobey my God at their behest, forsake my wives and my children, and trample these holy and eternal obligations under foot, that God has given me to keep, and which reach into the eternities that are to come. I won't do it, so help me, God." Taylor then "vigorously struck the book on the desk" to which the congregation responded with a loud "Amen."
Taylor (along with First Counselor George Q. Cannon and First Presidency Secretary L. John Nuttall) then goes into hiding to escape arrest and remains in the "Mormon underground" until his death two and one-half years later.
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